


princess pants

by perculious



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-04
Updated: 2014-02-04
Packaged: 2018-01-11 05:15:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1169116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perculious/pseuds/perculious
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“So it looks like it's the group of insurgents we received reports of earlier,” Zuko said, “up in the northern corner of the Fire Nation. Around here.” He gestured on the map lying open on the table in the center of the council circle. “They’re definitely working with at least a handful of firebenders. Unsure how many people it is altogether.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	princess pants

**Author's Note:**

  * For [inklesspen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/inklesspen/gifts).



“So it looks like it's the group of insurgents we received reports of earlier,” Zuko said, “up in the northern corner of the Fire Nation. Around here.” He gestured on the map lying open on the table in the center of the council circle. “They’re definitely working with at least a handful of firebenders. Unsure how many people it is altogether.” He took his seat again, to Aang’s right.

"Hmm." Sokka looked at the map, resting his chin in his hand and furrowing his brows. He narrowed his gaze, and switched hands. "Hmmmmmmm."

"Uh, Sokka?" Suki said, leaning forward and glancing up at his face. "Can I interject, or are you not finished with your speech yet?"

"I’m not finished," Sokka said, a little frosty. He furrowed his brow a little further, and scratched his head. After a moment, he said, "Okay, fine, Suki, go."

Suki rose from her seat in the circle, and pointed at a section of the map. "It's not the same group," she said. "You’ve drawn an arrow making it look like the group from last month’s insurgency is migrating further east, but this mountain pass was knocked out by a landslide about a year ago. Unless they have earthbenders with them, which I doubt, this is a different pocket.” She sat back down, looking over at Sokka. “Did you want to add anything?” she said, her tone suspiciously wiped clear of sarcasm.

“Uh, no,” he said, “very good, Suki, yeah, you got it.”

“Uh-huh,” Katara said, raising her eyebrows at Sokka.

“Oh man,” Aang said, his eyes round, looking at the map where Suki had indicated. “So we’re dealing with something on a larger scale. Okay, my crack team of advisers, help me out. What do we do here?”

“I think it’s pretty obvious,” Toph said. She leaned back in her chair, crossing her arms behind her head and putting her feet up on the table in the center of the circle. Her boots crumpled up the map, leaving muddy tracks over a significant portion of the southern Earth Kingdom. “These yahoos just don’t remember how Aang got this gig in the first place. You know, big impressive weapons, powerful bending, avatar state? We just send a task force of earth- and waterbenders up to the Fire Nation to knock them around a bit, and they’ll get scared off right away. They just gotta know we mean business.”

“Are you serious?” Katara burst out, leaning forward in her seat. “You’re advocating physical violence here?”

“Uh, yeah.” Toph wiped the back of her hand across her nose and snorted up some mucus. “You know, physical violence? The thing that won us the war?”

“More like the thing that started the war in the first place,” Katara said, crossing her arms. “What won us the war was Aang’s bending. And his mercy.” She thrust her chin up. “Anyway, these insurgent groups are just thugs. They’ll only respond with more violence. We have to reach out to them.”

“Hey, great idea, Katara!” Aang said, leaning forward in his chair. She smiled at him, feeling just the tiniest flutter of unease. She’d told Aang she needed some time to figure things out, and he’d never pressured her. But she pressured herself, telling herself firmly that it wasn’t fair to Aang to string him along. Although she wasn’t. Maybe.

“Yeah,” Toph said. “Reach out with tanks.” She blew her bangs out of her face. “Reach out with a small elite task force of fighters. Yeah!”

“I don’t know about that,” Sokka said. “I mean, this is a group of Ozai loyalists who’ve stayed alive and uncaptured for years now. They’re not gonna be exactly defenseless.”

“That’s exactly why we gotta make an example of them,” Toph said. “Show everyone else that they can’t get away with this kind of thing.”

Katara rolled her eyes. “I can’t believe we’re even discussing this,” she said. “It’s out of the question. We need to rely on diplomacy. Otherwise we’re no better than Ozai himself.”

“Yeah, we are,” Toph shot back, far too quickly to have really thought of a reasoned response to that. Katara prickled with irritation. Toph was doing it again, just provoking her for the sake of provoking her, and it meant that Katara was never going to win this argument, even though she was plainly right.

“Whoa, whoa,” Aang said, holding up his hands. “Calm down, guys. Katara’s right. We should be trying to win these people over. It worked on Zuko.”

“It did not,” Zuko said, scowling. “I wasn’t brought over by your charm.”

“Sure you were,” Aang said, beaming at him. “What we should do is, I should go down and meet with them personally. We can talk it over. See why they’re so upset. I mean, everyone likes peace, right?”

“No, some people like power,” Toph said. “Look, you might have forgotten what the old Fire Nation was like, but I haven’t. These guys do not care about holding hands and singing songs.”

“No one was talking about that,” Katara said, her voice rising. “You just can’t admit that my idea’s better.”

“No,” Toph spat, “you just don’t have the courage to really lay down the law.” She turned to Aang, which was really infuriating, because her blindness meant that she was only turning away from Katara for effect. “Aang, you’re the Avatar. You can’t put yourself in danger just because little miss princess pants over here thinks that everyone in the world just needs a little love—”

“I’m pretty sure one of the defining features of princesses is wearing dresses, not pants,” Katara said loudly.

“Whoa,” Aang said again. “Hang on a sec—”

“She’s just trying to seem tough,” Katara said, without glancing at Aang. “That’s always been your problem, Toph. You care so much more about what people see you as than about doing what’s best for everyone. If you’d just give up on being the hardest person in the room for a second, I think we can all agree that—”

“I don’t care what people see me as,” Toph said, her voice dripping with scorn. “I’m blind.”

“Oh, very funny!” Katara said, throwing her hands in the air. “Ha ha ha! I’m laughing!”

“You might as well be, that’s about as much as you ever relax—”

“Whoa, guys!” Aang leans forward in his chair. “Calm down! Let’s take a break okay?”

“Fine by me,” Katara says, tossing her hair back.

“Yeah, fine,” Toph says, glaring.

-

Toph crushed Katara to the wall, her hands caught up in Katara’s top, her mouth hot against Katara’s. Katara pushed back against her, which only shoved their bodies closer together, increasing the heat between them. Toph reached up and pulled hard on Katara’s hair, and Katara gasped. She lashed out, her elbow connecting with the side of Toph’s head and her foot connecting with Toph’s ankle.

“Ow,” Toph said, laughing, and kissed Katara harder. Katara grabbed the back of Toph’s head and shoved their mouths together, trying to kiss deeper and more aggressively. She bit down on Toph’s lower lip, and Toph grabbed Katara’s hip, pinching her hipbone hard in her fingers.

“That hurts!” Katara said, shoving Toph back with her forearm against Toph’s collarbone.

“No kidding,” Toph said. Her dark hair set off her milky eyes, her skin pale as the moon, not even a little tiny bit flushed. Katara set her mouth in a line, breathing hard through her nose.

“Don’t do that,” she said, “don’t disagree with me just to—I mean—you can’t go against me in the council just so we can—so that later—”

“Who’s saying ‘can’t’?” Toph said, rolling her eyes. She tossed her head to the side, fixing her headband with a hand. “I can do whatever I want, princess.”

“And stop calling me that,” Katara said. “It’s not funny, okay?” She wanted to say that it was princesses and princes in the Fire Nation that destroyed her people and took her future, but Toph had an acute sense of when she was really upset and when she was just leveraging her past to knock Toph off her feet.

“Okay, sugar pie,” Toph said, grinning wide. “Anyway, I wasn’t doing it on purpose.”

Seeing through the bullshit went both ways. Katara didn’t even answer, she just leaned back against the wall and crossed her arms.

“Fine,” Toph said. “I was. But I was serious too.” She rubbed Katara’s hip, insinuating her fingers a tiny bit underneath the hem of Katara’s top.

“Then take a second and think about what you’re saying, and actually argue against me instead of insulting me—”

“Ughhh,” Toph groaned. “I’d rather argue it out like this.”

Katara pressed her lips together tighter, right back to the level of fury she was at in the council room. “Why can’t you just—”

“Because you’d stop liking me if I was boring,” Toph said, and leaned in to kiss Katara again—less aggressive, but no less intense, opening her mouth against Katara’s right away. It only stoked the anger, but that just made Katara want to kiss her more, so she did, letting Toph worm her hand up her shirt and wrapping her arms around Toph’s shoulders like a combat hold.

Katara hadn’t given in. She knew where this was going, but no way was she going to be the one to cave first. Toph would admit Katara was right before she’d get into Katara’s skirt, that was for sure.

“I know you’re plotting, prissy butt,” Toph muttered against her mouth.

“I’m not,” Katara said sweetly, and kissed her again.


End file.
